Starlight, Starbright
by dreamsweetmydear
Summary: Tim and Ziva spend some time at the planetarium, where Tim has planned to present his friend with a special surprise. Written for the NFA Secret Santa


**From the author's desk: **This was written for the NFA Secret Santa, and I ended up writing a combination I'm not used to. I am very happy with this piece though, and I hope you all enjoy it too.

**Disclaimer: **_NCIS_ and its characters are the property of Donald P. Bellisario and his associates. This was written strictly for non-profitable entertainment purposes

_**Starlight, Starbright  
**_by_** dreamsweetmydear**_

Tim glanced at Ziva with a smile as he drove his car carefully through the outer DC metro area, looking out for slick patches on the wet asphalt that were typical of roads at this time of year.

It had been a long time since they'd had a chance to hang out, just the two of them.

Since her rescue from Somalia, Ziva had thrown herself head first into getting her life back together. He'd noticed times when she'd simply sit quietly at her desk, staring out the window at the DC skyline, or tend to the leafy green plant that she kept in the corner with a lost look on her face.

She didn't have to tell him for him to know that she still found it hard to believe that she was back, or that she was still dealing with the aftermath of her captivity. He'd read it in her slightly more quiet nature, and her occasional pensive moments at her desk, as if she was waiting for everything to disappear.

Apartment hunting had taken some time as well, but they'd finally found her a place—as it turned out, Tony had a friend who was a realtor, and the place they'd found was closer to DC proper, making it a much easier commute to work.

Still, he couldn't help but be happy for her when she'd finally received her Special Agent status. He just wished he'd gotten the chance to celebrate it with her, like old times.

But she was still keeping her distance, not going out with him and Tony much. It had been Abby who told him about their frequent girls' nights out.

Tim hadn't told anyone how much it hurt him to find out that she had remained in Israel. Ziva was one of his closest friends, so close that she was like a sister to him. Sometimes she was older, giving him sage advice, and sometimes younger, when she was being silly and especially when she and Tony got into one of their squabbles. (She reminded him of Sarah, actually, but with a slightly more violent streak, not that he'd ever tell her that.)

But now, with Ziva no longer living in Silver Spring and the distance she'd been keeping from him and Tony, he didn't get to spend too much time with her. It used to be that they'd have dinner together once a week, talking about books (she was very well-read) or playing Scrabble or other word games while watching Jay Leno or David Letterman or whatever that was good and looked interesting. Sometimes they would mess around on her piano—he hitting random notes, she playfully getting mad at him and threatening him with music lessons. Or else, pulling out some sheet music, and trying—and failing—to teach him how to play.

"So how's that keyboard working out for you?" he asked her, bringing himself back to the present as he made a turn.

"I have not used it yet," she answered quietly.

Coming to a stop at a streetlight, he turned to her, confused. "Why? Does it not have a big enough range? I remember your piano had the full 88 keys, but I thought the keyboard was the same."

She glanced at him with a small smile. "I see you remember some of our piano lessons."

He blushed. "Still not any good though."

She grinned at him for a moment, her eyes twinkling, before the smile faded slightly. "I haven't really played any music since I've…come back."

Tim kept his eyes on the road, and his voice steady. "Oh."

Seeing their destination ahead, he pulled easily into the parking structure, and found a spot. They climbed out, Ziva giving him a surprised look over the little sports car's hood. "The planetarium, McGee?"

He grinned, pleased with her reaction. "Well, we haven't spent time together recently, and I thought it'd be nice to do something out of the norm. Besides, I thought you liked astronomy to some degree."

She smiled. "Well yes, that I do."

"C'mon," he said, grabbing a medium-sized package from the back seat before closing his door. He didn't miss Ziva's eyes narrow in curiosity when she saw it. "There's a friend of mine who works here. He said he can get us into the observatory where the telescope is."

The trek through the winter chill was luckily short, but Tim was thankful for his coat, and he could see Ziva was too, if the flush of her cheeks was anything to go by.

Besides being welcomingly warm, the planetarium was hushed in the late evening hours. Most of the families with young children were gone, leaving behind people like Tim and Ziva—individuals interested in the study of stars and planets, but not wanting to be disturbed in their quiet contemplations of the universe by loud disruptions.

The two friends moved from exhibit to exhibit, and Tim couldn't help but smile at Ziva's look of concentration as she read panel after panel of information on the Earth's moon or the sparkle of mirth in her eye as she stepped on a scale to see her weight on Mars, and then another to see it on the Moon, and another to see it on Mercury.

Tim had figured out early on in their friendship that Ziva was a curious person, and was fond of learning. As they wandered through the planetarium, he could see her visibly relax, and slip into her intellectual persona, a part of her rarely seen by the rest of the team, one he was privileged to know.

But one of the best moments of the night for him was seeing her eyes light up at the sight of the galaxy spread across the domed ceiling and walls and floor of the planetarium's inner chamber. She was definitely his little sister tonight, he decided as he watched her eyes widen as she tried to take in every star, every constellation. She looked so fragile in the dim blue light of the room, her petite frame lost in the expanse of the universe.

Tim was never more sure than that moment that he'd made the right call in bringing her here.

"Amazing, isn't it?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"It's so…vast…" she trailed off, not speaking much above a whisper.

"Makes you feel a lot smaller than you thought," he agreed, recalling the first time he'd been to this particular planetarium, and his initial reaction in this very same room.

She nodded, and they remained together in silence, studying the stars that swirled and moved slowly around them.

"We should go meet my friend. Apparently, Scorpio is going to be visible tonight, and he's going to let us borrow the observatory telescope to see it," he finally told her, drawing her out of their quiet reverie with a gentle nudge.

She turned to him with a smile. "All right."

They started walking again, leaving behind the domed room and making their way to the back of the planetarium, Tim holding onto the package tightly, not wanting to lose it.

Finally, they came to an office door that read "Researchers Only", and Tim knocked on the door.

"I have been meaning to ask. What is that package for, Tim?"

Tim grinned again. He'd been wondering when she'd notice, but he didn't get the chance to answer as the door was opened by a South Asian man a few years younger than him. His brown eyes twinkled merrily as he shook a loose lock of dark hair from his lightly-bearded face.

"Tim! So happy you could make it!" the man said jovially, his voice accented slightly.

"Hey Kunal. Good to see you too, man," Tim greeted his friend with a pulled-in hug before turning back toward Ziva to introduce her. "Ziva, this is my friend from college, Kunal Bhatt. Kunal, this is my good friend, Ziva David."

"Pleased to meet you," the younger man said with a nod. "Come on in, the constellation should be in view of the telescope soon."

Tim and Ziva followed Kunal into the research area and up a couple flights of stairs to an observatory with the largest telescope either of them had ever seen.

"Whoa," Tim couldn't help but murmur out with an accompanying whistle.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Kunal tossed back cheekily. Tim chuckled and shook his head at his friend's antics.

"Shows how much you've matured, Mr. Astronomer," Tim bantered back to his friend, though he was following Ziva with his eyes as she wandered around, looking at the various gadgets and gizmos in the room.

"Psssh. Maturity is overrated," Kunal joked as he looked through the scope of the massive telescope.

"I feel as if I am in Abby's lab from an alternate universe," Ziva told him with a short laugh as she came to a stop near him. "So many machines!"

Tim nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

They were silent a moment, Kunal working away, before she turned back to him. "You never answered my question."

He smiled. "Patience is a virtue, Ziva."

"Whoo! That's gorgeous!"

"You see it?" Tim asked at his friend's outburst.

"Oh yeah, and he's a beauty, all right. You've gotta check this out!"

Tim turned to Ziva then. "Would you like to go first?"

She smiled, but shook her head. "No. You go first."

He nodded, and held out the package to her. "Okay. Can you take this so I can use my hands if I need to?"

She nodded, and took the parcel from him as he walked toward the telescope, sharing a wink with his friend.

"Man, I _so_ owe you," Tim whispered to Kunal as he bent down to look through the scope.

"Nah, don't worry about it. Consider this repaying you for saving me from the wrath of Professor Padilla and Chem 2B. God, that class was such a nightmare!"

Tim grinned as he studied the celestial scorpion that symbolized his and Ziva's shared zodiac sign. It really was beautiful.

Behind him, he heard the box being turned over in her hands before being torn open, and then the opening of the envelope with the card inside.

He heard her read it quietly aloud as he stood and walked back to where she stood.

"_**All that I know  
Of a certain star,  
Is, it can throw  
(Like the angled spar)  
Now a dart of red,  
Now a dart of blue,  
Till my friends have said  
They would fain see, too,  
My star that dartles the red and the blue!  
Then it stops like a bird—like a flower, hangs furled,  
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.  
What matter to me if their star is a world?  
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.**_

**There exists a Star of David, but you deserve your very own star, one that is brighter than a piece of gold, and will be here long after you're gone, so that everyone will know how brightly you shine, including you."  
**

He watched as she switched the card from the front of the stack to the back to study the information book on stargazing, the star map with the red circle near the middle of Scorpio's body, the rest of the materials, finally stopping at the framed certificate from the International Star Registry that told her she was the proud owner of her very own star.

In all that time, however, she had not looked up at him once.

He swallowed, feeling nervous now. Maybe she hadn't liked it after all? "I'm sorry the star doesn't have a name. I wanted to name it, but I couldn't think of anything, and I figured you'd be able to think of something more meaningful to you than I would."

Still she said nothing, she did not meet his eyes, and he shifted nervously from one foot to another. "I-If you don't like it, I, um, I can always—"

He wasn't prepared to feel her arms wrap around him so suddenly, or to feel the tremble that ran through her or the dampness that seeped into his shirt.

"Thank you," she whispered hoarsely into his chest. "It's wonderful. But…but _why_?"

Managing to get his arms wrapped around her, he held her tightly as he combed his fingers through her hair the way he often did with Sarah in order to get her to stop crying. "Because you'd lost your Star of David at some point, and made no move to replace it when you came back. You seemed like you were missing something, but didn't know how to get it back. I just…wanted to help, I guess."

He squeezed her a little tightly once more, before quietly asking her, "Would you like to see it?"

She pulled back and nodded, and he led her to the telescope where Kunal had busily been adjusting the settings so that Ziva's star would show up in the viewfinder.

More than anything, Tim would always remember her smile when she saw her star glinting in the sky.

Later, as they drove home, Tim asked Ziva if she'd thought of a name for the star. "I'm still thinking," she told him as she glanced back down at the framed certificate in her hands, "but I think that perhaps I would like to name it after Tali."

Tim nodded with a smile, and pulled up to her apartment, parking and getting out to follow Ziva inside out of the cold winter night for dinner.

As Ziva busied herself in the kitchen, Tim spied the keyboard sitting along the windowsill.

"I think maybe it's time you start playing piano again, Ziva," he called out to her as he settled himself into her couch.

"I think you are right," she called back, and he was glad to hear the smile in her voice.

-----  
_Poem:_ "My Star" by Robert Browning


End file.
